Guys, I have something to confess... I like Sakaguchi, but I think Sakaguchi's creative influence on FF is overrated. During the most popular titles' development - starting with FFVI - he already took on more of an overseeing Producer role and handed over the day-to-day directing to Kitase & Co. Kitase, who originally wanted to be a film director before applying at Square, was the one who shaped the series the most with the cinematic approach and focus on (melo)drama it's been known for for the last 20 years. Personally I never cared much about pre-FFVI FF.
Btw, just stumbled upon this super interesting interview from 1997:
http://shmuplations.com/ff7/
Sakaguchi:
Ive been working with Kitase for a long time, since FF5. He did most of the event scenes in FF6: the opera house, Celes suicide scene, the scene where Setzer climbs the stairs and reminisces, and more. Im not exactly turning things over to the next generation just yet, but for FF7 almost all the story was done by Kitase. His original ambition was to be a film director, so hes well-disposed towards this workIve left all the in-game event scripting in his hands.
As for my part, since FF3 Ive led the battle team, and that was my role this time too. Well, actually, the battle team is composed of solid veterans, so I stepped back a bit and played more of a producer role.
I don't think Sakaguchi is as essential to FF as Kojima is to MGS, for example. His games after he left SE were nice and I liked them, but they ultimately felt very by the numbers and I'm not sure they would've set the gaming world on fire even if they weren't X360- or Wii-exclusive.
Still, it would be interesting to see if he'd be up to do a new mainline FF again nowadays. From interviews in the last years he seemed tired of AAA development and comfortable making smaller games, like his quite successful mobile game Terra Battle (really enjoyed it for a few weeks, which is very rare with F2P games!), though.
EDIT1: LOL, just saw I'm not the only one with this thought here.
EDIT2: To be fair, Sakaguchi obviously was a good producer who got shit done in time and knew how to foster talent. Very similar to Tabata and probably the reason why Sakaguchi likes him and might "see himself" in Tabata.